“Mold?”
“Or mildew. Whatever it is.” He reached past her to scratch at the dark gray fibers clinging to the work. The moment he touched them, a green spangle shivered across the weaving’s surface and he saw that it had been enspelled. From her gasp, he knew Maddie had seen it, too. They glanced at each other, then stepped closer to the hanging and began to strip off the network of fibers that covered it—neither mildew nor mold but something of the Shadow. Abramm soon discovered that little currents of Light set into it coalesced the fibers into stiff, integrated patches that lifted free from the tapestry beneath to be more easily pulled off.
Slowly, patch by patch, they uncovered the work that lay hidden beneath— one like nothing in all the collections of the palace, the University, or even the archives in the Hall of Kings. Fine deeply colored threads had been worked into a tableau of exquisite detail and nuance. Scarlets, blues, a wealth of greens interspersed with rich browns and luminous blacks, the whole accented by shining silvers and golds. It reminded Abramm strongly of the Robe of Light, and the more they revealed of it, the more convinced he became it was no ordinary weaving of wool or linen, but very possibly a work of the Light itself.
Once they had pulled away most of the obscuring veil, they stood back to regard a completely new scene: Avramm didn’t kneel at all, but stood on a much lower stone, presumably at the base of the natural amphitheater upon which the Hall of Kings was built. The first few rows of onlookers’ backs had been rendered in the foreground, gathered around the king as he was crowned. Beyond swooped the valley, cut through by the River Kalladorne and bounded on the far side by the western headland. The sky, no longer cloudy, was light blue, with puffs of white cloud.
As for Avramm, he was a small, dark-haired man who already wore the real crown upon his head—the same plaited skeins of light Abramm had worn yesterday. The ancient Avramm also wore the Robe of Light, and held the scepter in one hand, the orb in the other, just as Abramm had. A plume cloud of tiny stars extended from the orb toward the onlookers, some of whom reached out toward it.
“It’s just like what happened with you,” Maddie breathed while Abramm gaped in astonishment.
She moved back to the tapestry again, holding up her kelistar for a better view, finally pulling over one of the benches so she could climb up and peer at the area of her interest: something on the horizon at the far left edge of the work. A moment she stared at it, then glanced over her shoulder at him. “I think this is Graymeer’s . . . shown fully built here, at the same time as he’s being crowned. Which makes it unquestionably Ophiran. And this gold and silver thing here . . . must be the guardstar.”
He stepped closer, not needing to climb onto the bench, and saw that it was indeed his fortress. And that she could be right about the guardstar. Wonder flooded him. The Heart had been left intact but buried in its platform in Hur. What if Graymeer’s still had its heart buried somewhere? If they could find it and ignite it . . .
“It would solve all the problem with the warrens and the possibility of more corridors being opened,” he murmured. To say nothing of the protection it would give them from the Esurhites. With such a wonder in place . . . he might not even need the Chesedhans.
She had left the matter of the guardstar and was now peering at another part of the scene not too far away from the fortress. He heard a faint, “Oh!” and then, after a moment, “It’s your dragon, again.” She glanced back at him as she pointed to something in the sky floating not too far from the fortress. He stepped closer still.
It looked exactly like the dragon in his vision.
Chills crawled madly across his flesh. He stared at it, reliving his coronation vision and feeling again the suffocating power of this creature’s evil.
“Sir?” Byron Blackwell’s voice broke into his thoughts and drew him around. His secretary hurried down the ramp toward him, the look on his face presaging he had yet another crisis to report. “They’ve found the—” His voice choked off as his eyes fixed upon the tapestry hanging at Abramm’s back. “Why. . . ? Where. . . ?”His eyes tracked to Maddie and back to Abramm.
“It was cloaked,” Abramm said. “All these years, and we didn’t even know it.” He glanced at the hangings across the hall from him and added, “Who knows how many more are hidden in the same manner.” And what kinds of things we might learn from them. He drew his thoughts back to the moment. “What did they find, Byron?”
Blackwell gave a start and cleared his throat. “The printing press, sir—in the bowels of the Keep, as you expected. No Prittleman, though. And trouble’s brewing down in Southdock. A mob’s come together, threatening to storm the Holy Keep. Two squadrons of royal troops have already been sent to quash it.”
Abramm nodded. “I don’t suppose I need to go down until it’s over.”
“No, sir. Probably be better if you waited.”
“Well, see that I’m kept informed.”
Blackwell frowned at him. “You should be in bed, sir. You look on the verge of collapse.”
As soon as he said it, Abramm was swept with a wave of wooziness. He staggered for a moment, then shook it off. “I’ll be going there very soon,” he told his secretary. “Don’t worry.”
Blackwell continued to frown at him. “Yes, sir.” He stepped away, glanced at Madeleine, then at the tapestry again before hurrying off.
It was almost as if he had taken all of Abramm’s energy with him, for no sooner had he departed than the wooziness was back, stronger than ever. Maddie said something once Blackwell was out of earshot, but her voice sounded blurred and distant. When Abramm turned to ask her to repeat herself, he set the entire hall spinning around himself, as at the same moment his legs turned to water. He collapsed on the bench, grunting as fire flashed up his leg.
He heard Maddie say something, her voice high-pitched, her words coming far too fast to understand. Then Captain Channon was bending over him and Abramm gripped the man’s arm. “I think I’m going to need that chair you were talking about earlier, Captain.”
“Yes, sir. Philip’s bringing it right now.”
————
Gillard passed the day dozing in and out of wakefulness, his thoughts focused on the dilemma of how he was going to gather his strength. His supporters would rescue him as soon as he was strong enough. But he wasn’t going to make much progress without food and water. How they thought he would be able to get any of either so long as he must convince his keepers he was still asleep remained a mystery. And he was beginning to grow rather miserably thirsty.
It took all his willpower not to open his eyes and ask for water when his attendants came in to check on him that afternoon. If not for his interest in their talk he might have given himself away. But he was fascinated to hear that Prittleman had apparently been writing pamphlets critical of the king, which had finally pushed Abramm into having the Holy Keep searched. Of course High Father Bonafil had to protest, and naturally Abramm had to arrest him. It made him want to laugh even as it made him angry.
He could understand the laughter . . . but why was he angry? He had no liking for Bonafil nor for the Mataio, and Prittleman was a stiff pain in the lower regions. He’d intended both men to die beneath the morwhol’s claws, though obviously they had not. Was I the only one the beast got?
No. He knew for sure it had killed Rhiad. And from the men’s talk, he gathered Abramm had not escaped unscathed, either, for they spoke of his crippling and the hideous scars on his face—news that filled Gillard with intense satisfaction. He wished now he’d opened his eyes the night before so that he could have seen the damage for himself. How crippled was crippled? Had the king’s retainers brought him in on a chair? He didn’t know, but it amused him to think of his hated sibling being carried everywhere by lackeys.
At last the men left him, and he was freed from the temptation to ask for a drink. Once the door lock grated again and all sounds faded, he finally opened his eyes. Late-afternoon light poured through the window to his righ
t, striped with the shadows of the window bars. He was indeed imprisoned in the suite at the top of the Chancellor’s Tower. Would his new friend come again tonight? The man had promised it would be soon. . . .
He awoke later to the deep gong of the University clock echoing over the city. An orange glow flickered across the bed canopy’s gray folds as if someone had stoked the fire too high. He managed to lift his head enough to see past his toes and the footboard to the hearth in the wall on his left: nothing there but a bed of coals. His eyes returned to the canopy, then to the window in the eastern wall. The curtains gapped open, their edges flickering with the orange illumination.
The fire was outside.
A great boom shook the glass and the bed and the organs in his chest, and he clutched the sheets beneath his hands, fear washing over him in a great cold wave. What dreadful turn of events now? Just when he thought he would be rescued.
Another boom. Then another, smaller but closer, perhaps at the base of this very tower. A voice called sharply from the chamber adjoining his. A door squealed open—not his own but apparently the one leading out to the stairwell. The voice echoed again, calling a name, then burst into a torrent of profanity. The door slammed shut, the key jangled, and everything started happening at once. Shouts, bangs, screams. Now a grating in his own lock, the door flying open, searing lantern light slicing through his velvet shadows. Cowled men stood along his bedside. One of them bent over him, assuring him they were friends. . . .
The voice was familiar again, though he couldn’t see the man’s face for the glare of the lantern behind him. The men at the foot of his bed had been
doing something with the bedding, and now the one who had spoken did likewise at the top. At his word Gillard felt himself lifted off the bed in a makeshift stretcher. As quickly as that he was carried from the suite, noting the bodies of his guards sprawled unmoving upon table and carpet in the adjoining chamber. Then they were out on the landing and moving down the stairs, around and around and around.
No one said anything. Out the door they went, then across the tower’s cobbled yard, surprisingly devoid of soldiers. Those who were on guard clustered at the railed north fence watching the great conflagration leaping against the dark sky. Smoke swirled thick and acrid on the air, pieces of ash and debris floating down on every hand.
Gillard’s carriers bore him swiftly through the iron gate in the riverside fence to a small dock, where awaited a lightless barge of the kind used for carrying bales of wool downstream from the heartland, then restocked with a variety of goods for its return trip. Gillard’s handlers passed him off to men waiting in the barge, and within moments he had been tucked among the casks and kegs.
Shortly after that he felt the barge move, carried upstream for now on the incoming tide, gaining all the distance it could before its crew must resort to sail or pole or mules pulling from along the riverbank. Soon after that the man who had spoken to him in the tower returned to offer him a single cup of water and no more.
“Your innards have to get used to working again. Too much and you’ll be in more pain than you can imagine.”
The man left, taking the light with him, and Gillard felt waves of weakness flood over him. He heard a couple more vigorous explosions as sleep overtook him. Later he awakened to a lighted lantern and a new keeper: a bald, narrow-eyed string of a man dressed in a Guardian acolyte’s robe. The stranger gave him two cups of water this time, promising warm fish broth soon.
As he dozed off again, he heard the University clock toll, so faint in the distance now he could barely hear it. One . . . two . . . three . . . four strikes. Almost dawn now.
And no one had caught up with them yet. . . .
HIDDEN
TREASURE
PART TWO
CHAPTER
12
It was over a week before Abramm was finally able to make the trip out to Graymeer’s to search for its guardstar. For two days following his collapse outside the gallery, he had lain in bed so stupefied with laudanum he had little awareness of the storm that raged through Springerlan. On the third day he decided he wanted his wits back and refused to take any more, but its effects took another day to wear off, so it was almost four days after the fact that he learned of all that had transpired as a result of his decision to search the Holy Keep.
On the night following the arrest of High Father Bonafil, a Terstan mob had ransacked the place, burning and bashing everything in the ground-level buildings before blowing up the Sanctum itself. Royal troops had intervened, arrests were made, and men—mostly Terstan—were tried and punished. Which displeased the city’s Terstans almost as much as the destruction of their Keep had displeased the Mataians.
To make matters worse, in the midst of all the chaos, Gillard had been spirited away from the Chancellor’s Tower. Trap, who as First Minister was charged with acting in Abramm’s stead, ordered the city closed down the moment he was told of the disappearance, initiating a house-to-house search. But those actions failed to turn up the prince and only increased the tension between the two groups.
The rumor mill spun out wild tales of royal troops dragging off hapless Mataian families to be tortured for their faith, and of the veritable warren of Shadow-filled passages discovered beneath the Sanctum. People grumbled at the soldiers and the restrictions, called each other liars, and incited ridiculous concerns over what the future held. Finally a group of hysterical Mataians staged a small riot down by the docks. Seeing the situation spiraling out of control, Trap reopened the city before even a fifth of it had been searched, precipitating the immediate exodus of fearful Mataians and destroying any chance of keeping the escaped prince close.
Emboldened by the First Minister’s concessions, the Mataians further demanded he release High Father Bonafil, but by then Abramm was sufficiently clearheaded to take back the reins of rule and refused. He did promise to consider providing the displaced Mataians with assistance in building a new Keep—but that would be contingent on their abiding by the laws of the land. He further assured everyone that the Duke of Northille had done precisely what Abramm himself would have done had he been able, and that he was very pleased with his First Minister’s actions.
He did, however, personally interview some of the soldiers who had been on duty in the tower yard the night Gillard was taken and from that concluded his brother’s escape had been carried out by means of the Shadow’s powers of deceit: every man he spoke with insisted that even had he not noticed the kidnappers going in, he surely would have seen them carrying out a man as incapacitated as Gillard was. That they had not, meant they’d either been Commanded to forget or the perpetrators had been cloaked in Shadow.
He also made a personal inspection of the network of tunnels found beneath the Keep—riding down to the ruins in his coach and submitting to the indignity of being carried in an open sedan chair to the point of interest, then limping about with the help of his cane. He did it not so much to see the tunnels—of which he already had intimate knowledge—but to draw renewed attention to their existence. He made no proclamations about them but did make a point of wondering out loud how there could be such things of obvious evil beneath the Flames that were supposed to drive it all off.
Finally, nine days after he and Maddie had uncovered the amazing images of Avramm’s coronation on the tapestry, the crisis had quieted enough that Abramm was able to return his attention to the problem of his fortress’s vulnerabilities— and the tantalizing possibility that its guardstar might still be on site.
He began his investigation by concentrating his efforts on the peculiar mound of bird guano that stood on the inner ward’s upper terrace adjacent Commander Weston’s offices. Roughly the size and shape of the platform that had supported the Heart of Hur, Graymeer’s mysterious mound had over the years been believed variously to be—under its coating of guano—a rocky outcrop, an ancient rubble pile, and even nothing more than a massive accumulation of droppings, petrified over the centuries. Targeted
briefly for removal when workers had leveled the upper terrace to rebuild the commander’s quarters, it had turned out to be much harder than anticipated and the project had been abandoned.
Since they’d gone at it from the sides without success on the original attempt, Abramm suggested this time they start digging down from the top and that they soak it with water beforehand to soften it.
The men brought out ladders, buckets, shovels, and picks and set to work while the displaced sea gulls swirled around them, squawking in protest. In fact, the birds couldn’t have made the work go harder if they’d been trying, repeatedly landing on the mound, getting in the way, pecking and biting those who sought to chase them off, and sometimes diving at the men in defense of their territory. Finally the supervisor deployed several men with clubs to drive them off. Forced to abandon their prized perch, they circled above the work site, congregated along nearby walls and roofs, and walked restlessly about on the ground some distance away, filling the air with their raucous calls.
After an hour of minimal progress, Abramm departed from overseeing the operation directly and toured the wallwalks before climbing the main lookout tower. Disappointment weighed on him as he realized he wasn’t likely to get the answers he’d hoped for in the time he had allotted to be here. Given the current political climate, he did not want to be away from the palace more than half a day. Besides that, he had to face the combined Tables this afternoon, hoping to persuade them to approve his request for both a war tax and a conscription order. Not a happy prospect with all the Mataian lords still angry with him.
He followed Channon up the spiraling staircase, Trap, Philip, and Jared on his heels. By the time they reached the tower parapet, his right leg was reminding him sharply that it had hardly begun to heal from Balmark’s sword thrust. At least he’d made the climb on his own power, something he could not have done only a few days ago.
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